Witterings from the Southside of Glasgow on politics,art,music,law and books

Sunday, 22 February 2009

L-Idyll: the brutal truth.

A relatively late trip to supermarket for weekly shop. Bit down cos of end to good weekend and numerous domestic and work tasks mounting up. But a chat with the woman on the check out gave a big dose of perspective and showed how hellish this economic crisis is getting.

My local supermarket Somerfield was bought out last summer by the Coop. So it has been known that our place is going to go and replace by Lidl who must have bought the site in G hill.

So staff have been worried a lot as my weekly chats has shown. If they would be kept on what the transition would be etc.

The checkout worker told me that at a meeting on Friday Lidl announced that the the building would shut for 6 months from March 7th and all staff would lose their jobs. Although 100 work there Lidl only plan to have 15 staff who would multi-task. They also have to sort out their own tax and insurance - essentially be self employed. No sick pay or paid holiday entitlement. Absolutely outrageous and shows how capital is using the crisis to carry out a lot of excesses.

You can sense the despair in the shop and the shelves are almost bare - no new stock being delivered a la Woolies and Zaavi. My worries over the renegotiation of my weekly shopping ritual is nothing compared to the shock facing 100 low paid shop workers. Grim grim grim....